MJF Images Fine Art landscape, nature and travel images from the American West and around the world.

Archive for the ‘homestead’ Tag

The ranch land near Zion Canyon in Utah is among the most scenic in the country.

We might as well face it. America is no longer what it once was. Not long ago this was a country that relied on small-scale farming and ranching. They fed the cities with their increasingly important manufacturing economies. Perhaps more importantly they helped to form the country’s very identity. Farms, ranches and small towns have traditionally been a well that we drew upon to create a dynamic, growing nation. Many American thinkers and inventors were born and raised in small-town farming communities. To take a more specific example, American fighter pilots in both world wars learned their bold flying skills as young men in crop-dusting planes. There are countless other examples.

Nearly every region of the country has become more developed and populated. Cities have grown steadily; suburban areas surrounding them have grown even faster. And it’s these so-called exurban areas that have spilled out into formerly rural areas. Large parts of rural America have literally been paved over, changing them for the foreseeable future. But it’s not all gone, not by a long shot. You can still experience much of this country’s rural charm if you’re willing to leave the cities, get off the main highways and slow down.

And that is what this series is all about: travelling off the beaten track to experience some of the country’s rural charm. The introductory post discussed the growing rural-urban divide in America, but Part II left politics behind and focused on my home-region, the Pacific Northwest. This post will zero in on a unique part of the country: the amazing Desert Southwest.

It’s always fun finding an old buckboard wagon. In the dry air of the Southwest, they are well preserved.

Geography & History

The unique geography of the Desert Southwest is centered on an enormous geographic feature called the Colorado Plateau. This large chunk of elevated land extends across southwest Colorado, southern Utah and northern parts of Arizona and New Mexico. But the desert SW region extends west of the Plateau into the southern Great Basin of Nevada and SE California.

It also includes the low, hot deserts of southern Arizona, and actually continues south into Mexico, though it’s a different culture altogether there. Anyone considering a trip into the far southwest of the U.S., however, should seriously consider Baja California as an extension. The peninsula is amazing, the people friendly, and it is far safer than mainland Mexico at the moment.

What draws visitors today presented challenges to early explorers and settlers. It is an arid region of vast treeless plains on one hand, and steep bare-rock canyons and mountains on the other. Rivers are often incised into inaccessible canyons and follow torturous routes. One can’t easily follow a river for a distance then take a shortcut across a meander to save days of travel. And if you do manage to exit a precipitous canyon, water is very difficult to find.

The beautiful Baja Peninsula, Mexico, is an extension of the Desert SW of the U.S.

Appropriation

Ancient Ones to Spain to Mexico to USA

This region has been occupied for thousands of years by native groups. Spanish explorers entered the region beginning in the 16th century. During America’s westward expansion in the 1800s, the Desert Southwest was merely a barrier to cross in order to reach California. Most of it then belonged to Spain, and all roads led to Santa Fe. This still-beautiful city was the only significant settlement in the entire region. Today you can see some of the earliest buildings constructed by white people on the North American continent in Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico (see image below).

But you do not have to travel very far to see houses built long before that. Chaco Canyon and other sites are what remains of the ancient ones. Ancestral Puebloans (aka Anasazi), and before them the Basketmakers, inhabited these parts for thousands of years. They had success farming maize (corn) and beans, and they even mined for copper, silver and gold.

A hike in New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon takes you past the so-called Supernova pictograph.

Despite the area’s harsh climate and geography, this region has the longest history of European incursion in the west. That is because the Catholic Church in Spain, specifically the Jesuits, established missions here going back to the 16th century. Santa Fe was founded in 1608. That’s 12 years before 102 travellers aboard a ship called the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock.

The San Miguel Mission in Santa Fe, originally built in 1610.

Santa Fe is the oldest capital city on American soil. It served as the capital of New Mexico for Spain, then Mexico after their war of independence. It was not long Mexico’s, as in the 1840s first Texas, then the U.S. military fought for control of New Mexico. It was ceded to the U.S. in 1848 after the Mexican-American War.

Taos to the north is also very old. The famous American frontiersman, Kit Carson, who first arrived in Santa Fe in 1826 and made his fame as a mountain man, scout and fierce fighter, lived there for years with his Mexican wife Josefa. They had eight children together.

Window on the historic Kit Carson home: Taos, NM

The famous Santa Fe trail, like the Oregon Trail to the north, began as a trading route that later became much more important as a route carrying American settlers west. Unlike the Oregon Trail it traveled through truly hostile (American) Indian country. The Apaches and Comanche did not tolerate trespassers and were feared much more than most tribes to the north (some Sioux bands excepted).

An old trading post on the Santa Fe Trail, New Mexico.

Mining in the Southwest

The Desert Southwest has from the beginning of European exploration been a target of mining. While ranching and farming faced the realities of the region’s dry, harsh climate and geography, mining had “only” to overcome the fierce Apache. I mentioned the early missionary efforts by Spain. If you know anything about imperial Spain, you know their desire to bring savage tribes into the Catholic fold was only surpassed by their lust for silver and gold.

When the U.S. took control of the Southwest, mining continued. But since the American military generally had more success putting down native tribes than had the Spanish and Mexicans, and because the U.S. government put in place several incentives and subsidies (e.g. the 1872 Mining Act), mining bloomed in the region. For visitors interested in history and in exploring rural parts of the region, the remains of mines large and small are not hard to find. And so are the ghost towns that once boomed in support of the miners.

Old mine workings like this one are not hard to find if you ramble around exploring in the Southwest. This is in New Mexico’s Mogollon Mtns.

In the early 1850s Mormons began to settle the Desert Southwest. Originally settling the Salt Lake Valley, they soon pushed south into canyon country. The remains of their homesteads are visible in many places, and often in very scenic locations (see image below). Like the Catholics long before them, they too founded missions in order to convert the natives.

Cowboys & Indians

One final piece of the region’s history has perhaps received much more attention than it deserves from a historical perspective. Stories of the old west that romanticize cowboys and outlaws have always had the power to capture our attention. In the Desert SW you can visit the old hideouts of legends like Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy, James Averill and the Hole in the Wall Gang. It’s also easy to visit old movie sets and eat at the same cafes, drink at the same bars as did old-time movie stars like John Wayne and Gregory Peck.

Billy the Kid started young. Click image for the source webpage.

For example, Kanab, Utah celebrates the era of Hollywood westerns at the same time it enjoys its location close to scenic wonders like Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks. Monument Valley is a place where the Navajo Nation shares the spotlight not only with the dramatic scenery but with the area’s history as setting for the famous collaboration between director John Ford and actor John Wayne.

The old Mormon homestead at Capitol Reef National Park, Utah.

Road Tripping the Southwest

It is somewhat overwhelming to contemplate a trip to this enormous region. You can too easily bite off more than you can chew. And you can’t have a good time if you’re behind the wheel for your whole vacation. Decide what you’d most like to see and how much time you have. Then decide whether you can swing several trips (preferable) or must choose the one area that most ignites your imagination.

In succeeding posts we will travel from west to east in a series of road trips. They are those I have done, many several times, and I chose them because they not only visit spectacular natural wonders but take off down two-lane country roads with only locals (mostly bovine) for company. The idea is to get you off the beaten track to see the charm of the rural Southwest. I’ll repeat myself: whatever you do don’t try to see everything at once. You can’t travel, for example, from Anza Borrego in California’s Mojave to New Mexico’s high desert and hope to see much outside of gas stations and roadside eateries. That is, unless you have at least 3 months to travel. Thanks for reading!

Have you noticed that pretty much every photographer publishes a “best-of” list at the end of each year? Hmm…not sure if I want to continue to cooperate on this. I never feel good about doing things that seem expected; just my personality. So I’ll do my own variation on the theme. I’ll post three of my favorites for the year. Not 10, and certainly not 15.

But here’s the hitch: if you have other ideas on the matter, images of mine that you’ve seen either here on the blog or on my website, by all means let me know and I’ll post them. They will appear with your name in upcoming Single-image Sunday or Wordless Wednesday posts. Just comment on this post with the link to the shot or describe it using its title/caption.

I love this first one for the exceedingly brief moment it represents, and the way it tells a story about the battle between storm and mountain range. The placid pasture with grazing cattle is just the sort of contrast that a story-telling image is made stronger for.

Knocking on the Door: An April snowstorm breaks over the Sierra Nevada in California.

I’m fond of this next one not only because I almost didn’t get up it was so windy and cold, but it’s one of my rare “planned shots”. I have been wanting to get a well-balanced shot of this barn and homestead in nice light for quite a long time. Also, the horse being outside on a very chilly dawn made me think it was meant to be.

The Old Gifford Place: An historic homestead lies beneath the cliffs of Capitol Reef in Utah.

I like last one a lot because while the sky is not overly colorful, it’s amazing the way sunlight can be aimed as a powerful beam when it is squeezed between cloud and landscape. And when that light is collected on a simple hillside of quaking aspen, where I had just barely reached an opening in the forest, it can turn your whole world golden.

Happy New Year everyone!

Golden light floods into a grove of quaking aspen in Colorado’s Cimarron Mountains.

I’ve been working on the southern Great Plains lately away from my beloved Oregon. I don’t know why I miss home more now. After all, I’ve been here in Oklahoma for no longer than I’ve been away on my long photo safaris of the recent past. But I do miss home.

That’s why I”m writing this post at the airport waiting for my flight. I have about a week and a half off so I decided on the spur of the moment to cash in frequent flyer miles and fly back to the Northwest. I need a break from the monotony of treeless plains and fields, from a river-less place that gets its water from an enormous underground store created by rains of the distant past.

The Ogallala Aquifer is one of the largest of its kind in the world and has supported the American bread basket for generations. Now of course it’s being “mined”. We’re steadily depleting it, forcing us to continuously lengthen our straws, drilling deeper and deeper for precious water.

I’m posting a few photos from an old farm that I passed on the long highway that runs the length of the Oklahoma panhandle. This stretch of loneliness juts westward between Kansas and Colorado on the north, the bulk of Texas to the south. It seems as if it takes forever to drive far enough west to leave Oklahoma, either continuing west to New Mexico or north into Colorado. The highway never strays. It points west like an arrow.

It’s inevitable that you pass or parallel a few historic pathways. One is the old Santa Fe Trail. Kit Carson and countless others rode horses over this trail in that golden time of westward expansion in America. But this series of photos speaks to a more recent time. Although the farm was abandoned sometime in the 1960s judging from the vehicles left behind, it very likely was used in the decades before that. Maybe even during the wet years before the dust bowl swept through in the 1930s.

John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath documents the lives of those hard-working souls who left Oklahoma during the dust bowl and traveled to California in search of work. These are the kind of people who built this country. The story of westward expansion has fascinated me for a long time. It was the first historical writing that I devoured while still quite young. At least by choice; I don’t count anything I was forced to read in school.

It was a warm late afternoon with very sparse traffic on the two-lane highway. A few flies buzzed around the old buildings and automobiles. The old windmill had been stripped long ago by relentless winds. On that day the wind was calm.

Heeding the warming someone had painted on a door (see picture), I didn’t go into any of the buildings. I just walked around shooting pictures, stopping to picture children playing in the yard, a weather-beaten woman hanging laundry. A man bouncing to a stop in one of those old pickups, drunk on moonshine.

I wonder why they left? Was it one of the droughts that routinely plague this region? Too many failed crops of corn? Did they just up and move to California one day? Did they start over from zero? I look and wonder. Did they miss home? Now it’s time for me to go home!

A photo & travel blog with a difference: Instead of strict focus on photo how-to, gear and the like, I'll pass on knowledge about the places and cultures photographed. I believe the more deeply you come to know a place, the better your pictures will be.

My past careers as science teacher and geologist mean that I can't help but teach about the natural history of photogenic places around the world. But photography is not forgotten. You'll also see practical tips about where and how to photograph the destinations. And once a week, Friday Foto Talk gives photography tips and how-to on a selected topic, for novices on up to expert.

What you won't find here is endless discussion about me braving dangerous weather, terrain or wild animals to get the shot. Nor will there be cheerleading gear talk or marketing pitches. I promise to leave that to other blogs, of which there are many.

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